Grafton fish plant to be only one of its kind

GREENSBORO, Ala. — With patented Falcon Protein Products technology, American Heartland Fish Products in Grafton is secured to have the first and only Asian carp rendering plant of its kind.

Falcon Protein’s technology inventors, Ken Mosley, and business partner, Rick Renninger, granted American Heartland Fish Products the rights to use the technology now only implemented by Greensboro, Ala.’s, 10th top catfish farmer, Bill Kyser. Even more specific to the Grafton plant is American Heartland’s exclusive license agreement from Falcon Protein to process Asian carp in the United States with the technology that produces no wastewater or odor, giving American Heartland the singular ability to proliferate and replicate the plant wherever the invasive species creates environmental problems, including the Illinois and Missouri rivers.

Unlike traditional rendering plants, Falcon Protein uses extreme heat to achieve turning raw offal, which is inedible animal byproducts, into marketable products by a process known as rendering. In 2011, Kyser bought exclusive rights to use the system for freshwater catfish in the United States. Kyser Farms and its Alabama Protein became the first private venture ever to use the trademarked Agricultural Byproduct Value Recovery System. This system, also known as ABVRS, is a quick, energy-efficient and environmentally sound rendering process that allows the plant to operate as a 100 percent green facility as related to no malodorous odors, toxic emissions or wastewater problems as it recycles animal tissue from food processing plants and other agricultural byproducts into high-protein fish meal for use in poultry, livestock and fish feed, as well as into heart-healthy omega 3 fish oil.

Mosley and Renninger designed and invented the equipment package needed to implement the new rendering system, which dehydrates offal instead of cooking it like conventional rendering; weeks ago production began on the equipment for American Heartland’s coming Grafton fish protein plant, owned by Grafton residents and businessmen Gray Magee, Ben Allen, Bryon Lebeau and other private investors. Mosley told Kyser that he expected the equipment to be in place in Grafton in January while the two men had lunch with The Telegraph at Mustang Oil, a small Greensboro diner, on the first Monday of this month. American Heartland Fish Products already has an existing building to house the plant at Illinois Route 3 and Croxford Road.

“As we build more units, we’ll be able to compress the footprint even more; this is the first one built,” said Kyser, the only man in the world using Falcon Protein’s technology. But that will change with the coming Grafton plant; Kyser began operating his plant less than a year ago.

In the new rendering system, high-fat, high-moisture fish byproducts, specifically to be used with whole Asian carp in Grafton, are ground and mixed with a compatible meal and loaded into the central processing unit, where air between 600 and 700 degrees Fahrenheit instantly evaporates approximately 90 percent of the moisture and releases it into the atmosphere as clean, odor-free steam. The hot air forces the dehydrated material through the unit, where the internal temperature is maintained at 240 degrees Fahrenheit. The finished meal then exits the system as a saleable product.

From start to finish, the entire process of converting the raw offal into internationally traded commodities and marketable products takes 10 to 15 minutes. Kyser Farms produces 10,000 to 15,000 pounds of saleable fish meal and fish oil products from 40,000 pounds of raw catfish offal three times a day in shifts with Falcon Protein’s rendering system.

Kyser, who has raised catfish for 45 years, owns and farms 800 acres of catfish ponds in Greensboro, also known as the “Catfish Capital of Alabama.” Kyser benefits from products from whole catfish because he sells his fish to plants that take fillet meat from fish and then those plants ship the leftover catfish offal back to Kyser, where he renders on site the offal, which is fish guts, heads and frames, into high-quality protein products of fish meal and fish oil.

Mosley, a Birmingham, Ala., businessman conceived of what became the Agricultural Byproduct Value Recovery System in the mid-2000s. Mosley graduated from Alabama’s Auburn University in 1971 with a degree in business administration; he later worked as a designer and manufacturer of wastewater treatment equipment.

“That’s what helped us come up with a different way for rendering,” said Mosley, who also invented patented agricultural technology more than 20 years ago that still is used today.

Mosley and Renninger released their latest invention to Auburn University that initially researched the system at its research site of Shell Fisheries Center north of campus, where researchers found that the system rendered not only catfish offal but also whole fish, poultry offal, whole birds, hatchery waste, shrimp and crab shells and manure.

In 2010, Auburn University was awarded a patent on the new system and licensed the technology to Birmingham-based Falcon Protein Products Inc., which Mosley and Renninger manage.

Kyser has agreements with two processors to buy offal generated at plants near Kyser Farms and Alabama Protein’s rendering facility using the new technology, which will receive offal from freshly killed fish that produces high-quality fish meal.

“We had three meat processing plants, but we’re down to two now, so there’s only so much offal,” Kyser said. “But Grafton will have plenty of fish.”

The price for quality, high-protein fish meal is more than $1,000 per ton.

The fact that Kyser Farms and Kyser’s Alabama Protein are adjacent is new in the rendering industry because of the Falcon Protein system, Mosley said.

Like Kyser’s plant, the Grafton plant will be a fraction of the size of conventional rendering plants, which have to include wastewater treatment facilities and be remotely located. But now, like Kyser, farms and new rendering plants can coexist in the same location or close to the source of raw offal, such as the Grafton plant located less than two miles from the confluence of the Mississippi and Illinois rivers. Commercial fishermen will catch the fish for the Grafton plant with nets and haul the catch to the plant.